Editorial Content for A New New Me
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Reviewer (text)
The fast-paced, tech-heavy world in which we live, the 24-hour news cycle, and the constant streaming tend to do weird things to our brains. At work, you’re thinking about home; at home, you’re working while also wondering if your passport will allow you back into the country after a trip, or if you need to have a copy of your birth certificate on you in case someone asks you to prove who you are. It’s enough to cause serious meltdowns. Add in menopause, and it reaches critical levels.
Helen Oyeyemi, the master of the strange and unusual, offers to the world a new novel that purports to divulge the lives of a woman with seven distinct personalities, one for each day of the week. Kingas A-G talk, walk and act as no other part of Kinga does, yet they all make up the same human being. A NEW NEW ME puts on a different mask every day and acts out a whole new play. But when the other Kingas clash, the battleground is a brain filled with pluses and minuses, friends and foes, all using the same human carriage in which to ride through life.
"Read this entertaining novel as you would a fairy tale, and you will be glad you gave the Kingas time to tell you their story."
One of the Kingas is a professional matchmaker. One is a scent-crazed perfumer with the olfactory sensitivity of a hunting dog. Another works as a window cleaner. Each has her own truths, desires and needs, but oftentimes one Kinga is in competition or involved in a confrontation with another. What happens then?
Oyeyemi is a PEN Open Book Award winner and is known for her relentless attempts to find new ways to characterize her characters, personalize their personalities, and create worlds where things happen that don’t often occur in any world we could possibly think of. Her magical sense of the way humanity works is very pointed in A NEW NEW ME, as the kingdom of Kingas living inside this one human body vies for autonomy, power and independence.
However, once a man is found tied up in the apartment of said human body, the Kingas all work against each other as they try to figure out who he is and why he is there. Who will admit to being responsible for this? Who will blame another Kinga for making this happen? Are they complicit together, or are they being attacked by one of the Kingas in particular? Is there any way to sort this out without losing a Kinga? Who knows what, who blames who, and is there evidence that perhaps one of the Kingas is trying to take all the glory for herself and leave the others in the ether?
A NEW NEW ME is an almost reckless imagining of a split personality without giving much scientific credence to Kinga’s mental illness. Is it possible to read this book without thinking in terms of Kinga having DID? Post-Montauk Project (which inspired “Stranger Things”), there have been plenty of times when our government was found to be messing with people’s heads and splitting their personalities. Is that what is going on here? Who can Kinga blame for this raucous rearranging of the selves contained in her?
There is a curious strain of whimsy and a great deal of suspense as the selves turn on each other to solve the crime in their midst. Some of the narration from one Kinga may be rather childlike and from another surly or intellectually astute. There is plenty to keep readers off the trail as the book unfolds. The language, the weird conflation of personality traits, and the inability to take any responsibility for what is happening turn the book into a weird and wacky adventure best appreciated as a fable rather than a Sybil type of story about diverse personalities within the same person.
Read this entertaining novel as you would a fairy tale, and you will be glad you gave the Kingas time to tell you their story.
Teaser
Kinga is a woman who is just trying to make it through the week. There’s a Kinga for every day. On Mondays, you can catch Kinga-A deleting food delivery apps. By Friday, Kinga-E is happy to spend the days soaking, wine-drunk, in the bath. Kingas A–G, perhaps unsurprisingly, live a varied life. Between them is a professional matchmaker, a scent-crazed perfumer, and a window cleaner, all with varying degrees of apathy, anger, introversion and bossiness. At least three of them are Team Toxic. It’s an arrangement that’s not without its fair share of admin, grudges and half-truths. But when Kinga-A discovers a man tied up in their apartment, the Kingas have to reckon with the possibility that one of them might be planning to destroy them all.
Promo
Kinga is a woman who is just trying to make it through the week. There’s a Kinga for every day. On Mondays, you can catch Kinga-A deleting food delivery apps. By Friday, Kinga-E is happy to spend the days soaking, wine-drunk, in the bath. Kingas A–G, perhaps unsurprisingly, live a varied life. Between them is a professional matchmaker, a scent-crazed perfumer, and a window cleaner, all with varying degrees of apathy, anger, introversion and bossiness. At least three of them are Team Toxic. It’s an arrangement that’s not without its fair share of admin, grudges and half-truths. But when Kinga-A discovers a man tied up in their apartment, the Kingas have to reckon with the possibility that one of them might be planning to destroy them all.
About the Book
From the award-winning, bestselling “literary pied piper” (The New York Times) who brought us BOY, SNOW, BIRD comes a masterful story that asks: What if the different sides of your personality had trust issues with each other?
New Day, New You!
Kinga is a woman who is just trying to make it through the week. There’s a Kinga for every day. On Mondays, you can catch Kinga-A deleting food delivery apps. By Friday, Kinga-E is happy to spend the days soaking, wine-drunk, in the bath.
Kingas A–G, perhaps unsurprisingly, live a varied life. Between them is a professional matchmaker, a scent-crazed perfumer, and a window cleaner, all with varying degrees of apathy, anger, introversion and bossiness. At least three of them are Team Toxic.
It’s an arrangement that’s not without its fair share of admin, grudges and half-truths. But when Kinga-A discovers a man tied up in their apartment, the Kingas have to reckon with the possibility that one of them might be planning to destroy them all.
How many versions of oneself can one self safely contain?
Audiobook available, read by Fleur De Wit
